More flying building expiramentation Options

[Team Black]

We know that we can't use actual aircraft, since they don't follow deploy logic- but there are a few ways to make aircraft out of vehicles:

1st idea: adjust the hover locomotor. Reading through Jah's heli research, I thought I'd give my own shot at it (I wasn't expecting to succeed where he had failed - rather, just to know for myself what does and doesn't work)

By adjusting the HoverHeight for the hover loco, you can make a convincing looking aircraft, with the ability to deploy. There are many minuses (which are described in Jah's thread), but they can all be overcome with some tweaking. However, there is a key issue that remains: cliff passability.
By making the terrain

CODE

; cliffs
[Rock]
Foot=0%
Track=0%
Wheel=0%
Float=0%
Hover=100%
Amphibious=0%
Buildable=no

it does not enable the unit to descend or ascend cliffs, only to move on them in the same level.
 livin_on_the_edge.PNG ( 96.67K ) Number of downloads: 4

This also causes some compliance issues with hover units- it's difficult to get them to go places, especially if a cliff is involved in the process.

VERDICT: using the hover logic is phayl.

2nd idea: make the vehicle fly. this is done by giving it an aircraft's locomotor, SpeedType=winged, and MovementZone=fly.
This method allows for aircraft to support every logic that vehicles support: deploying, passengers, hva animation, shp, turrets, etc.
The cons:
It is invincible during flight - unless it runs into a firestorm wall (not even hunter-seekers can get em)
It can't reveal shroud while in flight - but this might not be a big problem, if we make them MoveToShroud=no.
it can be picked up by carryalls - but I wouldn't really see that as a gameplay-threatening issue
 invincible_balloon.PNG ( 40.93K ) Number of downloads: 3

The invincibility thing might be balanced if we make em go really really slow, but even then, ehhhhhhh
If we were to make mobile buildings though, this would be the best way to do it (unless the exe hackers feel like getting planes able to deploy/undeploy. . .)

MY VERDICT: flying buildings in TS would be great, but it isn't going to happen. Even if it did work, it would already throw the game's balance to heck.

So what now? I'd hate to say it, but I'm leaning towards ditching the mobile buildings altogether, but I'm going to need some feedback before I decide anything...

[Lightstorm]

i still think carryalls are our best bet, we don't have to make them small, mabye make some kinda of ribbed thing that grabs it, you code it so when you construct a building you get a free carryall MK2 (building mover) with it, then (wait can you undeploy a building first built in the construction yard? we need to check that) when you want to move you simply undeploy the building, pick it up with the carryall mk2 and fly it to the new base site. I'm not really for using hoverlogic unless we can figure out how to make it ignore cliffs (is it possible to just copy over strings of coding from RA2 into TS? we don't need to change the coding itself but if we could some how identify the logic behind that YR deployable aircraft could we just port it over?

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

would you then give the undeployed building speed=0 so the player is forced to use the carryall?
can the player build additional carryalls from the warfactory?
if you want for each building a different carryall, do all these are available in the warfactory too? (seems a bit redundant if there appear 4 or 5 different carryalls)
how do you want to avoid a small carryall from a small building to carry away the biggest building.

The main reason why i don't like this, is because this doesn't supports the idea of the scrin having spaceships.

The only way i would accept your idea is, if the carryall looks like an spaceship enginesection, that picks up/docks with the spaceship. But for that, each Spaceship should have the same size or is designed in a way, so that on all ships the uienginesection layout is the same. Because i really don't want 4 or 5 different carryalls, while you can not avoid the smallest one carrying the biggest ship having some very ugly graphical errors (engines in the middle of a ship etc).

wait can you undeploy a building first built in the construction yard? we need to check that

afaik this works. the conyard can be build as a building and then undeployed into the unit.
If not we can overcome this using Freeunit tags on invisible dummy buildings. This way the construction buildup anim can be even different from the deploy buildup anim.

copying code from RA2 to TS is very hard. i don't think we find someone who can do this. So we have to work with the things, the TS engine supports.

This post has been edited by Lin Kuei Ominae: Jun 28 2007, 01:25 PM